Whose mind is yours, anyway?

Friday

Jan 10, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Before he became a filmmaker, Mark Lund created and published a magazine, International Figure Skating, which, he said, turned out to be the "largest of its kind after four years," and according to his bio, part of a $4 million enterprise.

Lee Roscoe

Movie made in Massachusetts to screen in Dennis

Before he became a filmmaker, Mark Lund created and published a magazine, International Figure Skating, which, he said, turned out to be the “largest of its kind after four years,” and according to his bio, part of a $4 million enterprise. Covering skating events such as the Olympics for CNN and celebrity ice events for Fox, he learned a lot about how lights, camera, blocking worked.

He began to make short films. One shot in Dennis at a family house, First World, is amazingly prescient, taking place fictionally as the Chinese make their first moon shot – which happened for real the day before this interview.

Justice is Mind is Lund’s first full-length feature film, an independent he produced for the unbelievably low sum of $25,000. Lund said he wanted to prove a high-quality independent film could be made inexpensively. He has done that using a cast of professional and semi-professional actors, including a number from Plymouth and two from the Cape.

The film will play at Cape Cinema in Dennis at 7 p.m. Jan. 24, and Lund will be there for a discussion.

In the film shot in Oxford, a community 10 miles from Worcester, many townspeople, including the police, a horse trainer and a pizzeria owner, play themselves. A retired police officer plays a lawyer so convincingly because, Lund says, he had been in many a courtroom. The town was enthusiastically cooperative, giving permission to use an ambulance and jail cells.

“I told the cops and crew if anyone gets booked we’d leave,” Lund said. Serendipitously, the house in which a good deal of the film was located had a library full of crosses, critical to the theme.

Lund wrote, directed and cast the film. More than 300 actors auditioned. When Vernon Aldershoff showed up, he had the look for the lead of successful restaurateur Henri Miller and was cast on the spot. “Aldershoff is a farmer by trade; also he has figure skated!” Lund said.

Using three to four digital cameras, the film was shot off and on from August to October 2012 with four months post production in which 170 special effects were created, an original score and sound (some of the clearest and most authentic I have heard in an indie) mixed into the edit.

Lund loves family and courtroom dramas and wanted to create one that was complex and rang true. To that end, a dean of law and attorneys were consulted.

In the film, past life memory and future mind tapping by machines merge in a psychological thriller, which develops slowly and then grips you with its logical twists and mysteries, haunting you afterward.

For the science in the film, Lund was inspired by a 60 Minutes show in which scientists used an MRI to identify a subject’s thoughts by scanning their brains while showing them objects. He wondered if intelligence agencies would not want access to that kind of machinery, part of the premise of his film, as is the amount of money to be made off “terrorism.” Corporate complicity and multinational immunity from prosecution come into play, too.

“I advanced the science to 2026,” Lund said. “Sometimes science advances too quickly. We all have things we’d prefer not to broadcast to the world.

“I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation or a past life but the question remains, where do these memories go when we expire? Are they somehow passed along genetically, as when we have a déjà vu moment?”

Lund sought complexity in his characters as well as his plot, and that evokes different responses. “It’s fascinating to see the reactions of audiences,” he said. “For instance, L.A. ones are different from New England. Some found Henri sympathetic, some thought he got what he deserved. People themselves are complicated. They may be outwardly nice, but have demons inside. They can be difficult to the world in some respect, but really are as nice as a cat.”

Justice is Mind, in part, captions and contrasts totalitarian states possible and past. Lund’s next feature, which derives from a piece of this one, will be a political thriller. If social media can overthrow governments in Cairo, he said, then little wonder the NSA wants to catalog our every move. Lund thinks it’s a fact of life that “unless you live in a basement” from cradle to grave, you are being tracked. I intend to track Lund’s work as he progresses. Movie buffs may want to, as well.

Justice is Mind is previewing in many art houses, pushing for distribution in the U.S. and soon, internationally. It will also be released as downloadable on sites such as Amazon.